Ultimate Crescendo
by Brooke-P-Davis
Summary: He bought an old record player so that he could listen to her vinyls and pretend that she was still there beside him, in all her skinny limbed and tangled haired glory. Totally nude apart from his Metallica tee-shirt that covered her slender frame.


**Summary **– _'He bought an old record player so that he could listen to her vinyls and pretend that she was still there beside him. He'd close his eyes and she'd be there, in all her skinny limbed and tangled haired glory, totally nude apart from his Metallica tee that covered her slender frame._'

Completely AU, Peyton and Lucas didn't have an 'epic love-story.' He didn't meet Lindsey, and he didn't save Peyton in the school shooting. Peyton dated Dean while Lucas dated Brooke, then when those relationships ended they came together.

**Author's Note** –This was originally just going to be called 'Crescendo.' But then someone informed me that there is an LP fic out there called that, so I didn't want to tread on anyone's toes. Furthermore, I've just had to buy a new laptop (FOURTH ONE IN TWO YEARS PEOPLE!) so the next three chapters to **ATOTF** is gone. Have no fear though, I _am not _giving up on that story, just be a little patient. And while I really should be working on that and my Halloween one-shot that needs tweaking, this popped into my head and I needed to write it. It's Peyton and Dean (because I love Dean with just about every girl on One Tree Hill.) and I wanted to try something new.

This actually came to me when I was re-writing chapter three of **ATOTF** and I started listening to 'With or without you.' And voila, my mind went into over-drive and this was spawned.  
I really enjoyed writing this, it even broke my own heart a little and I'm the writer! I'm just a wuss though, anyway enough of my ramblings! please read let me know what you think.

* * *

**Ultimate Crescendo**

_"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly." - **Neil Gaiman.**_

She hadn't seen him in years - five to be exact - but he still drove that old '67 Chevy Impala and wore those same battered biker boots. He still smelt faintly of gasoline, spearmint and soap and he didn't look different at all, just slightly older and more damaged, and although she wanted to cry because of his impeccable timing, she found herself laughing at the irony.

"Don't marry him, Peyton." He begged her like it was a reasonable request, and as if there wasn't a sizeable and prominent bump under her wedding dress.

"Go to hell." Her fingers curled into a fist and she was stuck between the urge to hit him and the need to burst into tears.

He grunted and shook his head at her. "Sweetheart, I've already been too hell."

She wasn't going to let herself cry_, she just wasn't_, it was her wedding day and she was marrying a far better man than Dean.

"Dean, this is my wedding day. You do _not _have the right to just show up after five years and expect me to come back to you. If you thought I'd do that, then you don't know me at all. "

"But I came back." He told her stubbornly.

She scoffed. "You're five years too late."

"You don't need to have this shot-gun wedding just because you're pregnant, Christ Peyton, you don't love him, and I _know _you don't."

She lifts up her hand and swipes it across his face. He had no right to start judging her life when he hadn't been a part of it for years.

He raised his own hand to his face and clicked his jaw. "You're still a fire-cracker, I'll give you that."

"Dean, get out." She tried to tell him calmly. Her baby was kicking, her heart was breaking and the wedding was starting in fourteen minutes.

He took her hand, enclosing it in his own. "Peyton, listen to me. I've been to hell and back, _literally. _I've burnt, tortured and been tortured in return, And every single night all I ever dream of is you. You Peyton, only you. "

A sob escaped her lips and then the floodgates opened and she just couldn't stop.

He gripped her face, thumbing the tears away from the contours of her cheekbones. "Hey... Hey. I never want to make you cry, _ever._ Just come with me. Be selfish with me, Peyton. Lucas will never love you the way you want him too, and you'll never love him the way you loved me."

She shook her head furiously, swatted his hands away.

"Peyton."

She raised her hand in the air and inhaled deeply. "Dean, I can't. I just can't. Even if it wasn't my wedding day and we could be together. It's not possible."

"We _can!"_

She delivered the final blow, and in one quick sweep, his whole world came crashing down.

She was going to die.

And he had barely heard her when she spoke of hemorrhages and placenta privia and some medical terms that he didn't understand.

She'd left for her wedding shortly after, a goodbye hanging from her lips.

He never saw her again.  
-

She was seventeen again.

For a short while everything seemed to fade to white, and she was _so, so_ happy. He wanted her, _really _wanted her. He didn't choose Brooke like Lucas had, or fall in love with someone else, like Nathan did. She was his first and only choice, and her heart was unravelling joyously in his hands.  
They'd met ten months previously, and he'd come into her life like a hurricane, wreaking havoc in his wake and in her heart.  
But she didn't care, because when it was good, it was amazing and the sheer sight of him made her soul soar. He had secrets and demons of his own, secrets that he poured out to her openly one day and kept fiercely from her the next.

He'd always leave – but he'd never not come back. If he was gone for a day, three or a week, he always came back.

-

She made the mistake of telling him how much she loved him, bore out her heart and soul, only for him to shatter them into a million tiny pieces.  
He told her if she wanted poetic notions and endless love that she should go back to Lucas. Because that wasn't Dean, it never would be.

But it was all a lie, a cruel and hurtful non-truth that he wanted her to believe. His dad was missing, he needed to find Sam and he was tangled in a web that he couldn't fight his way out. He couldn't stick around and it was easier for him to just leave her, for him to make her hate him.

But she never knew that he did, in fact, love her. He'd even bought an old record player so that he could listen to her vinyls and pretend that she was still there beside him. He'd close his eyes and she'd be there, in all her skinny limbed and tangled haired glory, totally nude apart from his Metallica tee that covered her slender frame_._  
-

He came back six months later, only to tell her he was leaving again.  
And somewhere between the heated words and the angry tears, clothes had been strewn across her front porch and they were intertwined together in the backseat of her Mercury Comet. He was rubbing his brisk palms up and down her luxuriously long and supple legs, thrusting deeply into her like it was the first and the last time and letting his body just tell her that he had missed her, _God he had missed her so_.  
Then came the mind-blowing crescendo and finally the silence ensued and all he could hear was the thrumming of his own heart-beat and the rain outside.  
"I... "He began before his voice faltered.  
She had pressed a delicate fingertip to his full lips. "You don't have to say it."  
She didn't want him to say it because he feared he would never see her again, she just wanted to stay inside his arms forever. She wanted to feel the slick leather of his coat against her naked skin as he draped it over them both, while they listened to the hard rain as it pounded against the windshield.

She wanted it to stay dark and rainy forever, so that they would never have to leave the back-seat. She even silently prayed to God and told him that she'd never eat, sleep nor sin again, if only he would stay with her. But she'd felt so warm and at ease and somewhere amongst the love-making, the promises and the goodbyes, she'd fallen asleep in his arms.

She'd awoken to the shining sun, and all that was left of him was his leather coat that blanketed over her nude body.  
And even though the day had broken and the sun was rearing its almighty head, it had been raining inside her mind and her heart.  
And she felt like nothing would ever be bright again.  
When she picked up the coat, a folded piece of paper dropped to the floor and she'd picked it up, hoping that it'd be a number or an address, _something_.  
It read. '_I love you.'  
_-

A/N - Okay, that was a little bit lame, and short, but I deliberately left it that way. Please let me know what you think. Would you like to see more Peyton and Dean? Constructive criticism is welcome.


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